Search Your Feelings, You Know It To Be True*

It has been a busy month plus. I have changed jobs, found out that I had to move out of my current apartment, dealt with car issues, and began to prepare for the move that will happen in a couple of weeks. It’s been a bit stressful, to say the very least.

In the middle of all this, I’ve been preparing for more Change. I had some very good, very helpful divination that has helped me see the larger picture of what my life is right now. It wasn’t the easiest picture, as there are a lot of challenges on the road that leave me feeling very frustrated, but it was needed. I very much wish that this was where the effects of the divination ended.

I’m really struggling right now. Since I sat with the diviner, a pebble got dropped in a pond I didn’t want to play in and the ripples are still moving out from the center. I’ve faced a lot of things before, after, and during divination and been told some very harsh, very difficult things by spirit-workers I respect. Right now, the thing that scares me the most isn’t something any diviner has told me but is something I’ve been carrying for gods knows how long.

I’ve always been a little bent in the gender department. When I was a child, my kindergarten teacher told my parents that I should be kept back from grade school because I ‘didn’t play right’ [no, I’m not kidding] and that, since i chose blocks over a play kitchen, I did not play like a girl. I was bribed into a dress for my prom and graduation from high school and the pictures are a bit painful. My first act of independence when I went to college was to cut off all my hair. Normal and toeing the line, I am not.

With one significant lapse, I’ve maintained that I do not have a place under the headers of ‘male’ and ‘female’. I don’t know what they mean and I don’t know what it is to feel like a woman or a man. I don’t; I just feel like me. An ex-boyfriend that I am still close with after ten years told me the other night that he doesn’t think either of us know what pronouns to use with me and that he can’t remember a time when I wasn’t having gender issues.

I knew when I got involved with my Patron that He wanted me as the gender-weird person that I am. He has no interest in my identity matching the body I was born in and I had absolutely no idea how much of a stumbling block that would be for me. I spent the better part of a year exploring what masculinity means to me and to Him and mourning the loss of what was never meant to be; me as a gender-normative, female-identified person.

For me, embracing the loss of what has never been my journey has been hard. We are born with preconceived notions of who we will be when we grow up and I never imagined this in my wildest dreams. There are still days when the loss feels palpable.

And here we are today.

I’m miserable and terrified. I can no longer maintain gender-wise the way I have been. I don’t know why and I don’t really care too much why [though I have my suspicions] but I just want it to stop right now.

What I do know is that something has to change. I can’t continue to live this way in a space where I hate it when people look at me, am preoccupied with what people see, and feel like a leper when I leave queer-oriented space. If I am very honest, though, I am not always comfortable with queers, either. When you get down to it, I’m just not comfortable, period.

I’ve said for years and years that I would never seek a medical transition and didn’t want to. I still don’t want to but I’m at a loss as to what else to do. What do you do when you are so uncomfortable with what the perceptions of you are that you don’t want anyone to look at you? I’m scared to find out.

I’m scared that my gender is some kind of sacrifice for Him and, if so, I will come to resent Him and His manipulation of my life. I’m scared of even thinking about that resentment. I’m scared because I don’t know what to do. I’m scared that it’s not going to get better and then I’m going to continue to feel this way.

My hope in this situation comes from the divination I received. I was told that He would tell me when it was time to make the formal commitment to Him that would begin a serious relationship. I set a deadline in April that I would be prepared to make a choice by June 15, which was yesterday. Yesterday was a hard day and was probably the hardest day I’ve had in quite awhile.

Today, the message is clearer: It’s time. I know the commitment that I have to make and it’s scary, but, after the last five years of preparation, I know I am strong enough to get back up when I fall down. I don’t know what this brings for my gender but I do know that this will be the ultimate test of my faith and, for now, I feel ready.